Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “α”

OUTLINE FOR AN ARTICLE ON THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE “MARSH”

(NOTES ON KAUTSKYISM)[1]

Our Struggle Against the “Marsh”

TheMarsh = K. Kautsky, Huysmans, etc.

Significanceof the distinction between Plekhanov, Hyndman, Heine and K. Kautsky, Vandervelde, etc. 2 distinctions of “shades”. Eclectics instead of dialectics. The “middle way”: “reconciliation” of extremes, absence ofclear, definite, firm conclusions; vacillation.

Conciliation and blunting of class contradictionsin wordsand their accentuationin reality.

Conciliation with opportunism.

Glossing over the theoretical and practical-political differ-ences with opportunism.

Repudiation (apostasy) of theRoad to Powerposition andof therevolutionaryessence (and revolu-tionary tactics) of the Basle Manifesto[2]....

The difference between the conceptions “Marxist centre” (=independentpolicy, independent ideas, independent theory) and “Marsh” (=wavering, lack of principle, “turn table” (“Drehscheibe”), weathercock).

Recognition ofrevolutionaryactivity along the lines indicated above, notdenialof legal activity and of thestrugglefor reforms, should be the essence of the “struggle against the Marsh”.

The possibility of a fusion of socialism and syndicalism, should there be a new and deeper division.

Parliamentarism and a different conception of it. “Illegal parliamentarism”.

[1]The article on the struggle against the “Marsh” (Notes on Kautskyism) was apparently never written. p. 30

[2]This refers to Kautsky’s pamphletDer Weg zur Macht(The Road to Power), published in Berlin in 1909. Lenin called it Kautsky’s “last and best work” against the opportunists.

TheBasle Manifestoon war was adopted by the Extraordinary Congress of the Second International in Basle, November 24-25, 1912. It exposed the predatory aims of the war the imperialists were preparing and called on the workers of all countries to wage a vigorous struggle for peace, against the threat of war, and “to oppose to capitalist imperialism the power of international proletarian solidarity”. Should imperialist war break out, it said, socialists must take advantage of the economic and political crisis it will cause so as to advance the socialist revolution (see present edition, Vol. 21 pp. 208-17 and 307-08). The leaders of the Second International (Kautsky, Vandervelde, etc.) voted for the Manifesto at the Congress, but consigned it to oblivion and supported their imperialist governments when the war broke out. p. 30